Transcriptor MCP

🎬 Now your AI assistant can watch videos!

Connect one server. Then ask Claude, ChatGPT or etc about a video: the transcript, the chapters, the metadata, or a single frame. It works with 11 platforms, not only YouTube.

[Connect](#-connect-in-30-seconds) · [What to ask](#-what-you-can-ask) · [Widgets](#-widgets) · [Platforms](#-platforms) · [Self-host](#-self-host)

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⚡ Connect in 30 seconds

The hosted endpoint is:

https://transcriptor.gateway.mcpal.io/mcp

🖱️ One click

⌨️ One command, for Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http transcriptor https://transcriptor.gateway.mcpal.io/mcp

Then run /mcp and approve the sign-in in the browser. After this, claude mcp list shows ✔ Connected.

🧭 No terminal

🧩 Any other MCP client

If your client is not in the list above, add the server with this configuration:

{

"mcpServers": { "transcriptor": { "url": "https://transcriptor.gateway.mcpal.io/mcp" } } }

If you want to run the server yourself, read Self-host. The tools are the same and you need no account.

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🧰 What you can ask

Long transcripts come in parts. Each response gives a cursor for the next part, so no text is lost.

Full tool reference (input and structured response)

Each tool that takes a video accepts url. This is a link from a supported platform or a plain YouTube ID. Each tool returns content (text for the chat) and structuredContent (typed JSON for your code).

get_transcript

Clean plain text, without timestamps, HTML, or speaker names. Without lang, the tool returns the track in the video's original language. Most platforms other than YouTube do not say which language a video is in; when the tool cannot tell which track that is, it answers with the list of tracks, and you call it again with type and lang. The inputs are the same as for get_raw_subtitles.

Response: videoId, url (the video page, as the server resolved it), type, lang, text, is_truncated, total_length, start_offset, end_offset. When more text is available, the response also has next_cursor.

get_raw_subtitles

Raw SRT or VTT content, in parts.

Input:

• type — official or auto. Without lang, the tool picks a track of this type
• lang — a language code or track name, as get_available_subtitles lists it. Without it, the video's original language, as for get_transcript
• response_limit — default 50000, minimum 1000, maximum 200000
• next_cursor — the cursor of the previous response

Response: the fields of get_transcript, plus format (srt or vtt) and content.

get_available_subtitles

Response: official and auto. Each field is a sorted list of language codes. Use this tool first, then give type and lang to the tools above.

get_video_info

Extended metadata from yt-dlp:

• identity — videoId, title, description, webpageUrl
• author — uploader, uploaderId, channel, channelId, channelUrl
• numbers — duration, uploadDate, viewCount, likeCount, commentCount
• classification — tags, categories, liveStatus, isLive, wasLive, availability
• images — thumbnail and thumbnails

get_video_chapters

Response: chapters. Each item has startTime, endTime, and title. When the video has no chapters, the list is empty.

get_video_frame

Input:

• timecode — "MM:SS" or "HH:MM:SS.mmm"
• seconds — an alternative to timecode. Give one of the two, not both
• format — jpeg (default) or png
• width — default 1280, maximum 1920, never larger than the source
• quality — 2 to 31, for jpeg only

Response: an image block, plus url, timestampSeconds, timestamp, mimeType, sizeBytes, and width. This tool needs ffmpeg. The Docker image includes it.

get_playlist_transcripts

Input:

• url — a playlist URL, or a watch URL with list=
• type, lang, format — the same as get_raw_subtitles, except that lang is required: the original language is picked only for one video at a time
• playlistItems — a yt-dlp -I value such as 1:5, 1,3,7, or -1
• maxItems — the maximum number of videos

Response: results. Each item has videoId and text.

search_videos

Input:

• query — the search text
• limit — default 10, maximum 50
• offset — the number of results to skip
• uploadDateFilter — hour, today, week, month, or year
• response_format — json (default) or markdown

Response: results. Each item has videoId, title, url, duration, uploader, viewCount, and thumbnail.

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📺 Widgets

Four tools have an interactive interface: get_transcript, get_video_info, get_video_frame, and search_videos. Clients that support MCP Apps and the ChatGPT Apps SDK show this interface in the chat. Other clients get the same data as text and JSON.

search_videos · "model context protocol MCP server production"

get_video_frame · an architecture slide at 3:30

get_transcript · a 3-minute MCP explainer, official captions

get_video_info · channel, views, likes, and 169 caption languages

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🌍 Platforms

YouTube · Twitter/X · Instagram · TikTok · Twitch · Vimeo · Facebook · Bilibili · VK · Dailymotion · Reddit

Each tool that takes a video accepts a link from these 11 platforms. The tool search_videos works with YouTube only, through yt-dlp ytsearch.

The server does not download video or audio files for you. It returns text, metadata, and single frames.

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🐳 Self-host

The tools are the same as on the hosted endpoint. You need no account.

Run the server with Docker. The image serves Streamable HTTP on port 4200:

docker run --rm -p 4200:4200 artsamsonov/transcriptor-mcp:latest

Then point your client at http://localhost:4200/mcp.

For stdio, give the image an explicit command:

docker run --rm -i artsamsonov/transcriptor-mcp:latest npm run start:mcp

{

"mcpServers": { "transcriptor": { "command": "docker", "args": ["run", "--rm", "-i", "artsamsonov/transcriptor-mcp:latest", "npm", "run", "start:mcp"] } } }

The server starts with no environment variables. Each variable below is optional.

The